Style and Form

- This is yet another one of John's broad-gesture songs. It's an early
foreshadow of the primal scream style that he would increasingly be
drawn to in some of his "solo" work with Yoko, but as a Beatles track,
this one bears comparison with "Yer Blues"
in terms of its heavy guitar
texture and sometimes wrenching meter.

- The painfully slow harmonic rhythm combined with the virtually unoticeable
broderline between Verse and Refrain sections creates the impression of
an improvisatory rave-up that could go on seeminly forever; as if, as
actually happens in the case of the later "Dig It,"
the officially released
track was just a conveniently-sized slice lifted out of a much longer,
complete studio performance.

- The "wrenching meter" effect here is caused by switching the meter
from 4/4 to 3/4 for two measures of the last phrase of the refrain.
John had used essentially the same gambit in
"Strawberry Fields Forever;"
but you won't read about *that* in the newspapers :-)

- The lyrics are a rather extreme example of John's talent for milking
poetic ambiguity from small bites of cliched small talk; "Come on/
take it easy". The amazing thing is how the roots of this go as far
back as such early tracks as "Yes It Is."

Melody and Harmony

- Most of the melodic material is from the realm of rapping chant. Only
for the title phrase followed by the lead guitar solo does it rise to
the level of memorable tunefulness.

- Harmony is predominated by what I call the
"Hey Jude" trio of I, IV, and
flat-VII. This is rounded out by the inclusion of flat-III (the next hop
around the cycle of fifths from flat-VII), and the garden variety V chord.
The juxtaposition of V with flat-VII, and I with flat-III creates two
classic cross-relations.

Arrangement

- The backing track is thick and heavily pulsing with the sound of many
guitar overdubs, the bass, and drum kit.

- The shaken (cow?) bell only *seems* to be incessant. If you manage to
track it (come on, you can do it yourself this time), you'll note how
neatly it is dropped out and back in over the course of the song; typical
Beatlesque attention to detail.

SECTION-BY-SECTION WALKTHROUGH

Intro

- The intro is eight measures long and features a syncopated vamp
on the I -> IV chord progression repeated four times. We're parsing
the tempo here as a fast 4/4:

------- 4X ------
|E |A |
E: I IV

Verse

- The verse in each case is 12 measures of jamming on the I chord. No
small amount shuffling action underlies the otherwise moribund harmony.

--------------- 3X --------------
|E |- |- |- |
I

Refrain

- The complete refrain is 24 measures long and is built out of an
unusual poetic pattern; the first two phrases seem like just a
direct continuation of the talky verse, the next two phrases have
singing only in their first halves, and the final two phrases are
left entirely instrumentl. Paradoxically, though the harmonic rhythm
steadily picks up pace in this section, the spoken word becomes
increasingly more sparse.

- The first refrain is actually eight measures short, starting as it does
where the chords change to A Major, below. If you imagine the song without
this shortcut, you can sense the danger of boredom quickly setting it by
too much unrelieved exposure to the E Major chord.

- By no coincidence, the metrical shift directly coincides with, and its
dramatic effect is intensified by, the most memorable guitar solo lick in
entire track.

- The reversable deployment of the chord progression in the final two
phrases nicely resonates with the inside/outside running joke in the
lyrics.

Outro

- The instruments drop out for the first four measures of the outro,
leaving the noisemaking vocalists momentarily in the spotlight.

- The remainder of the outro suggests a kind of never-ending repeat
of the verse section.

- Here we have an example where the Esher demo, compared to the official
version, is unusually sketchy with respect to musical detail: e.g.
no intro, the chord progressions are incomplete and in some places
different; the guitar work lacks punch, the tune doesn't fit properly
above the chords, and the most distinctive melodic riffs appear to
have yet been composed.

- By the same token, the broad strokes are already quite in evidence:
the verses with their pattering lyrics rapped out over repetitive
harmonies, and the refrains with their sparser lyrics declaimed over
more chord changes more clearly directed.

- IMHO, the extent to which the demo successfully captures the fundamental
essence of the finished product in spite of all sketchiness only goes to
underscore the notion that this song is, at heart, big gesture-oriented.